Rainy Season Has Begun

It's that time of year again, and I'm not too excited about it... the forecast is rain, rain, and more rain.  I know I should be grateful that we never have a drought like many other parts of the world.  I'll gladly take a Corvallis drizzle over a Midwestern blizzard... but still, I could use another month of sunshine.

OSU Beavers Game = good time to train

A funny thing happens every time there's an OSU Beavers game in Corvallis: no one shows up to train or workout.  There were only a handful of people at MMA class tonight, and even fewer at the gym.  I really like it, because there's more individual instruction from the coaches, and no waiting for space when lifting.  My MMA coach gave us a really good workout, and kept motivating us with comments like "you're the only one doing pushups tonight!  Your friends are just sitting around!"

I've been taking my fitness to another level lately.  MMA class is an hour long workout that leaves me drenched and tired.  When I started I would wonder how I'd get the through the entire hour.  Now it's like a long cardio warm-up, and I walk next door to a gym and really kill myself with olympic lifts and crossfit-type workouts.  I feel like I've reversed the aging process, and am stronger than I was even in the Army.  I could crush my 22-year-old self... if I could catch him.

Independence

My sounds have been played over 5,000 times!  Here's an odd improv piece I did last year.  It's an experiment in left/right hand independence, and playing octaves greater than one octave.

https://soundcloud.com/jesse-mattson/independence

Social Network(ing)

I've been having fun posting on Instagram and Vine.  Both can be linked to facebook, so cross-posting is very easy.  Vine is like the video version of twitter.  You can only post short videos with minimal editing capabilities, then people can view them as a loop.  I like the hashtag search in instagram and the ability to also post a photo to facebook at the same time.  I subscribe to the "picture's worth a thousand words" mentality and would rather show people what I'm up to.
Here are my links to follow me on Vine and instagram   -both have free apps for your phone.  A lot of my family and friends are far from home, some haven't been to Corvallis or Philomath yet, so sharing pictures is a great way for them to see the kids growing up, and what life is like in rural Oregon.

Sunday afternoon daddy/daughter time (shooting stuff)

In this video, Adelle is first shooting her Remington single shot 22 at a small steel plate.  Later she is shooting an old cooking pot- rapid yet accurate fire.  Notice the rifle is out of ammo and when the rifle goes "click" she does not flinch at all, and the barrel does not move.  I'm very happy with her technique at such a young age.  At the end of the video we placed a small exploding target (1 pound, legally sold at nearly every gun shop, around the size of a soda can) on the pot and made it disappear.  We're near the Oregon Coast, about 15 minutes from Philomath.

It's amazing how much girls can love shooting when introduced at an early age as a normal family activity.  It has turned out to be an awesome father-daughter bonding activity.  My oldest is now 10, and I started her shooting with a BB gun when she was 5.  The good ol' Red Ryder lever action.  She now is very good at shooting her own single-shot .22 with iron sights, as well as my scoped semi-auto 10/22, and even my AR-15.  It's a light rifle with an adjustable stock so it can fit a small shooter.  Recoil is almost non-existent too.

When shooting, I have Adelle practice three main positions: standing, sitting, and prone.  We then modify them to use available trees, backpacks, or other objects for support.  Very little time is spent using a bipod, and never ever do we shoot from a bench.  We usually shoot standing at 25-50 yards, sitting at 50-100, and prone at 100-200.  I'll get more into the specifics of what we do in later videos...

Few things are more fun than driving in the sand dunes. Here's a video of my brother and I tearing it up in his Rally Fighter near Florence, Oregon.  This is a production car made in Arizona by Local Motors